Tokina 11-16

Yard Work

July 11, 2010 by Justin Balog 3 Comments

When I installed my sprinkler system, I wish I knew about this…it would have saved me a ton of time and a very sore back.

I approached this image from several different angles, but once I raised my tripod up, and pointed my lens down on the top of the claw, I knew that is what I wanted. However, because I was shooting a very wide lens, the legs of my tripod were in the frame. It required some finagling and patience, but I was finally able to achieve the result I wanted.

Capture Notes:

Nikon D300
Tokina ATX Pro 11-16
Gitzo Traveler

Processing Notes:

Capture – 7 Images @ 1ev
Photomatix – HDR/Tonemapping
Photoshop – Curves (set grey point)
Photoshop – Basic midtones luminosity mask curves adjustment (luminosity blending)
Photoshop – Vibrancy boost
Sized for wed
Nik Sharpener – Display 35% selective to claw

Tip: A wide really wide angle (16ish mm on FX, 10ish mm on DX) lens isa great tool to achieve images like this, where you can get very close to a compositional element, and still have the rest of the subject in the frame. It also a fun tool to add an interesting perspective to portraits. For this image I used the very nice Tokina ATX Pro 11-16

Filed Under: Gitzo Traveler, HDR, Nikon D300, Tips, Tokina 11-16

Oxymoronic

July 5, 2010 by Justin Balog 0 Comments

I hope you are enjoying the Tour as much as I am. After a week of all LA, all the time, I will get us back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Capture Notes:

Nikon D300
Tokina 11-16 ATX Pro
Gitzo Traveler

Processing Notes:
Capture – 7 Images @ 1ev
Photomatix – HDR/Tonemapping
Photoshop – Curves adjustment (Expanded midtones luminosity mask)
Photoshop – Channel mixer (B&W basic mid-tones luminosity mask mild opacity)
Sized for web
LightAsMagic.com

Filed Under: Gitzo Traveler, HDR, Nikon D300, Processing Notes, Tokina 11-16

Tool Rental

June 27, 2010 by Justin Balog 5 Comments

After a day of wrestling with a tool that a blacksmith might use to forge a Terminator, I’d be dammed if I wasn’t going to make some images when I returned it. If you ever need to remove tree stakes from your yard, rent the tool, it will save you 2 months of failed re-enactments of ‘sword in the stone’. Leave that up to King Arthur.

Capture Notes:

Nikon D300
Tokina 11-16 ATX Pro
Gitzo Traveler

Processing Notes:

Capture – 7 images @ 1ev
Photomatix 3.2 – HDR/Tonemapping
Nik Define 2.0- Noise reduction
Nik Color Efex Pro – ProContrast
Nik Color Efex Pro – Glamour glow (slight desat)
Nik Color Efex Pro – Tonal Contrast (re-gain some contrast and definition)
Sized for web
Nik Sharpener – Display 40%
LightAsMagic.com

Here is a quick behind the scenes look at the kit in action.

Filed Under: Gitzo Traveler, HDR, My Favorites, Nik Software, Nikon D300, Processing Notes, Tips, Tokina 11-16

Never Retreat, Never Surrender

June 9, 2010 by Justin Balog 6 Comments

It started out like any other Saturday morning. Wake up early, make some coffee, head to the darkroom, and process a week’s worth of images. This has been my standard operating procedure for the last couple of months and it seems to work pretty well. I will dive into my holding project entitled “On Deck” and grab and couple of stacks that I want to process and post for the next week. Everything is quiet, the coffee is bottomless (which isn’t necessarily a good thing), and I’m taking a stroll down memory lane as I review images and remember the great times while making them. I was on my second cup of coffee when I began to process this image. I finished it well after the coffee pot was empty. Not only were the clouds a bit of a struggle, the canyon walls (both left and right) were riddled with Chromatic Aberration. The left side was plagued with magenta fringing on the vertical lines and the right side was spotted with a touch of blue fringing. To solve this problem, I processed the images where the problem was prevalent. This was the the two overexposed captures from the bracketed sequence. However, the CA really became an issue because once the right side was corrected, the left side was worse and vice-versa . Eventually I was able to establish a reasonable balance and carried on with my standard HDR/Tonemapping process. Now that I think about it, I might have been better served to process each problem image biased towards the specific CA fringing (one for magenta the other for blue) and then blended the two images together prior to processing. Hmm…a more appropriate tile would have been, Never Retreat, Never Surrender, and Hindsight is 20/20? Next time!

Scene: This image of the Canyonlands National Park, outside of Moab Utah, was shot on a short hike, about half way down from the mesa above.

Capture Notes:

Nikon D300
Tokina 11-16 ATX Pro
Gitzo Traveler

Aperture: f/22.0
Focal Length: 11 mm
ISO Speed: 200

Processing Note:

Capture – 8 images @ 1EV
Adobe Camera Raw – Raw conversion (CA correction on 2 images)
NX2 – Raw conversion on 5 images
Photomatix 3.2.9 – HDR/Tonemapping
NIK Define 2.0 – Noise reduction
Photoshop – Curves adjustment global
Nik Color Efex Pro – Tonal contrast
Photoshop – Lens correction (CA fix)
Nik Define 2.0 – Noise reduction selective to sky.
Nik Color Efex Pro – Correct color cast, still wasn’t happy, so I cooled it down a bit.
Sized For Web
Nik Sharpener 2.0 – Display 50%
LightAsMagic.com
….ugghhhhhh

Filed Under: Gitzo Traveler, HDR, Landscape, Nik Software, Nikon D300, Processing Notes, Tokina 11-16
Tagged With: Canyon Lands, Moab

Crafting A Cottage

May 19, 2010 by Justin Balog 0 Comments

As promised, here is a quick look at the post processing I did to create this image. In order to try and keep it relatively short, the video starts after the HDR/ToneMapped image had been generated using Photomatix 3.2. It walks you through the use of a Photoshop Channel Mixer adjustment and a couple of Nik filters to create the final image.

Also, if you are interested in the tools I used in this video, you can use the coupon code LIGHTASMAGIC to receive 15(percent) off of Photmatix or any Nik Tools.

You can find the original post here. I reversed a processing step from the original, but I’m not sure it made much difference?

For other videos from the LightAsMagic.com studios, click here.

Warning: Upon playback, I realized I overused the words ‘Vibe’ and ‘Ominous’, but it was far too late in the game to do anything about it.